


Anamorphosis

by radialarch



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brainwashing, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Steve Rogers as the Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-15
Updated: 2014-12-15
Packaged: 2018-03-01 16:03:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2779244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radialarch/pseuds/radialarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is not a love story; it's a ghost story.</p><p>[AU where Steve & Bucky both fall from the train.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anamorphosis

It is winter, and Bucky Barnes is dead.

 

* * *

 

In 1945, James Buchanan Barnes falls from a train. It is a tragedy; it is sudden, and swift, and Steve Rogers is left reeling, one hand outstretched and the other grasping at a slick half-inch railing.

Picture this: a glove soaked in sweat, and the fingers of a man numb with shock.

The train lurches.

Yes, let us stick to the facts. The train lurches. The shield clatters softly.

Two men fall to the ground.

 

* * *

 

There is a body on top of him. It is Steve. He would know that body anywhere, the smell of him, the way his breath is ragged in his ear.

“You idiot,” Bucky says. Pain has left him half-blind and breathless, but he brings a hand up to cradle Steve’s head. “You goddamn idiot.”

“Couldn’t let you have all the fun,” Steve says. There is blood on his teeth when he smiles.

The snow on the ground is already tinged pink, and getting redder by the minute. Bucky does not have to look to know he is a dead man.

It’s all right. He’s been living on borrowed time since the day he got off stateside. He’d thought he wouldn’t walk out of the war alive; his only regret is that Steve’s here with him.

“Sorry,” he says. His hand is still on Steve, curled against the back of his neck. “Didn’t want you to see this.”

“Shut up,” Steve says. His breath is warm against Bucky’s cheek. “Stay with me, Buck.”

Bucky raises his head and presses his mouth to Steve’s, half by instinct, just a fleeting touch. “Sorry,” he says again. “‘ve always wanted to.”

“C’mere,” Steve says, and then his forehead is pressing against Bucky’s own, and he’s breathing into Bucky’s mouth —

“Do it again,” Steve says. “For me, Buck, please—”

Steve’s face is damp. Bucky presses his hand into the soft short hairs at the back of Steve’s head and kisses him, kisses him like nothing else matters.

 

* * *

 

Two miles east the Red Army is coming.

They will not die in each other’s arms. They will not be buried here in a nameless grave, curled round each other in a blanket of snow.

This is not a love story; it's a ghost story.

 

* * *

 

He wakes up slowly. His arm throbs, insistent; he looks down and feels his throat contract at the sight of bone.

“Steve,” he says in a croak. “Where’s Steve.”

There are straps across his chest, holding him down. He strains against them, and a spike of pain shoots through his head, blinds him for a moment.

“Your friend is dead.” The voice comes from above. There is no emotion in it; it is merely a statement of fact.

“Shut up.” Rage makes him breathless. It sweeps upon him in an instant, a flash fire. “Don’t you dare.”

“He’s dead,” the voice says again. “He died shortly after we recovered your bodies.”

There’s a hand holding a cup to his lips. It tips liquid into his mouth and he chokes, coughs up spit and blood. He heaves, again and again, even though his stomach is empty.

His throat is burning. “You liars,” he says, and barely recognizes the voice as his own. “You fucking liars.”

Someone is holding down his arm. Someone is pressing a needle into him, someone is opening up a drip; it burns and burns and leaves him shaking like all the steadiness has burnt out of him.

“Stay still,” they say. There are hands on him; there is a hand over his mouth, there is a hand pressing down on his shoulder, and then comes the whirr of the saw and there is a scream.

The blade bites into his arm and his throat is dry, it is raw, he is shaking to pieces under their hands. They will take him apart, they will pick at his ruins and put him back together hollow.

The lights overhead flicker. Someone is screaming.

 

* * *

 

It is 1949, and they are easing the soldier out of cryo. He does not struggle as the blood returns to his limbs. There is frost in his eyelashes and a red star on his shoulder and he does not ask for Steve.

“We have a mission for you,” they tell him.

The soldier’s eyes are the color of pale ice. He reaches out and they press a folder into his hand.

He begins to read. He does not asks for Steve.

 

* * *

 

The soldier wakes up and it is 1953. There is a man in the chair opposite him.

“We have a mission for you,” they tell him. “You are to work with the captain.”

The captain is tall and blond and beautiful. The soldier looks at him and looks at him and looks at him.

When the captain looks back, his eyes are very blue.

The captain makes a noise low in his throat. He stands up and takes a step forward.

“Captain.” A technician puts his hand on the captain’s arm. The captain’s hands come up — there is a scream and a flash of bone and the tech falls back, cradling his arm.

The soldier watches the captain come closer. His breath is tight in his lungs.

The captain tilts his head and reaches out to touch the soldier’s face. He opens his mouth, but no words come out.

The captain is tall and blond and beautiful, and his thumb is stroking over the soldier’s cheek.

There is a terrible noise, and the captain goes down. He is curled on the floor, his face creased in pain.

The soldier watches them take the captain away. The fingers of his left hand have curled into a fist; someone is unrolling them, one by one.

“Who was he?” he asks. the words slide out of his throat with surprising ease.

No one answers him. They take him back to cryo, and he goes.

 

* * *

 

(Down the hallway in another room, they have strapped the captain to a table. "Who was he," they ask him, "what do you remember," and the captain clenches his jaw tight and closes his eyes and says nothing at all.)

 

* * *

 

The soldier wakes up and it is 1957. There is a man in the chair opposite him.

“We have a mission for you,” they tell him. “You are to work with the captain.”

The captain is tall and blond and beautiful. His gaze passes over the soldier like a shadow.

The captain has a file in his hand; the captain has a mission. The captain has a target, and a plan, and eyes that are ice blue.

The soldier stands up and takes a step forward. “Soldier,” someone says sharply; he ignores them.

When he reaches the captain, the captain is looking at him with a tilt in his head. The soldier slides smoothly to his knees and settles his head on the captain’s thigh.

The captain makes a questioning noise and puts his hand on the back of the soldier’s neck, and it is heavy, it is enough, it is everything. The soldier breathes out slowly and trembles under the touch.

 

* * *

 

They say the soldier is loyal to the captain. This is a lie.

The soldier follows the captain like a compass follows north, and it is adoration in his eyes, it is love. He would die for the captain; he would lie down at the captain’s feet and let him slit his throat.

Here is the truth: you may wipe the memories from the mind, but the body remembers.

 

* * *

 

Some days when they wake him, the captain slides quietly out of cryo, his eyes still sharp with cold. He looks at the soldier with contemplation befitting a weapon and there is no love in the gaze.

These are the good days.

The handlers will let the captain rise from his chair, and the captain will speak to the soldier in quick-fire Russian, and they will go, the captain and the soldier, the captain a step ahead and the soldier at his right elbow. The captain will not look back to see if the soldier follows, but it will be enough.

Other days, the captain comes out of cryo with a bitten-off cry, and his eyes are very blue. He looks at the soldier with a frown on his face, like a question that the soldier does not know how to answer.

Those days, they take the captain away. They take him to the chair and the cryotank, and the soldier is left with a mission he does not care for and handlers he does not care for, while the captain’s breath grows shorter and colder in his lungs.

Those are the bad days.

 

* * *

 

It is 1965, and the soldier has been awake for three days.

On a wet and cold rooftop overlooking Paris, the soldier is wearing a dark blue coat, and the soldier is looking through the scope of the rifle, and the soldier is missing the captain.

Three days ago, the captain had looked at the soldier with a tilt in his head, and he had brought his hand up to touch the red, red star on the soldier’s shoulder. Three days ago they had taken the captain away, and the soldier aches now low in his chest.

The captain ought to be here under the overcast sky, the captain’s boots ought to be echoing against the slick cobblestones, and instead it is the soldier who is lying on his belly on a wet and cold rooftop, waiting for a politician’s wife.

The wind holds steady. The shadows move slow over the soldier. The soldier is still, very still, counting the beats of his heart.

There is a break in the clouds, a sharp, piercing blue.

The soldier blinks against the sudden light.

 

* * *

 

It is 1965, and the soldier has gone missing. This is what they have told the captain; this is what he knows.

The captain has never been to Paris. Nevertheless, his footsteps are sure on the dark cobblestones; his gaze does not waver as he walks, past the conciergerie and palais de justice.

On the bank of the river Seine, there rises a mass of stone and stained glass. He slows his steps, looks up at the rose window.

(During the liberation he’d looked up at the same window and felt a surge of wonder, that something so delicate could have withstood the violence of war.

But no. The captain has never been to Paris.)

The soldier is waiting inside.

The captain looks at him, shifts on his feet, and attacks.

 

* * *

 

The soldier has sixty pounds on the captain, and no reason to keep the captain alive; and yet, when it is over, it is the captain on top of the soldier’s body, the captain’s knees bracketing the sides of the soldier’s torso, the captain’s hands on the soldier’s hands.

“Return to base,” the captain says. And then, very soft: “Please.”

And the soldier rises up to press his mouth to the captain’s mouth, very briefly, and gasps, “Steve.”

 _Steve_ — a name that’s been dead for twenty years, come back to life in the soldier’s mouth.

The captain’s eyes are blue, bluer than they have ever been before. He raises a shaking hand and lays his palm on the soldier’s face, where a dark bruise is blooming.

(The captain has never been to Paris.)

He says—

He says—

 

* * *

 

The captain and the soldier were never ones for the history books; but the margins were theirs, the footnotes, their shadows lurking behind the crisp white pages.

Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes died in 1945. Their ghosts just lived a little bit longer.

It is 1965, and the person who had been Steve Rogers and the person who had been Bucky Barnes rise up from the floor of a cathedral. They are holding hands.

They walk out from under the high arched ceilings, out into the night, out of memory, out of history altogether.

All ghosts must be laid to rest some day; this is theirs.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Anamorphosis](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3126437) by [reena_jenkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reena_jenkins/pseuds/reena_jenkins)




End file.
